Extracts are taken from Hansard, Monday 22 February 1999.
The full debate can be accessed on the Home Office web site.

"We oppose the Bill because it is inconsistent with our obligations under international law; it will damage race relations; and it will be neither firm in its effect nor fair in its intent." [Official Report, 11 December 1995; Vol. 268, c. 723.]

. . . . That is of course a quotation from the speech by the current Home Secretary in the Second Reading debate on the last immigration and asylum legislation to come before the House. As it happens, that quotation touches on some of the points that I wish to make about the Bill.

. . . . I represent one of the largest refugee populations in the country. My constituency has refugees from every quarter of the globe, including Nigeria, Ghana, Algeria and Somalia, and it has a huge population of Turks and Kurds. My concern about how we treat refugees and asylum seekers is based both in principle and in practice, because I will have to deal daily with the consequences of the Bill if it is not pro perly and carefully drafted.

. . . . As someone who for 12 years now has had to lead constituents through the highways and byways of immigration legislation to try to help them with their manifold problems, I believe that the Bill is a lost opportunity.

. . . . The Government has missed an opportunity to begin the process of constructing an asylum system that is transparent, fair, equitable and, above all, free from any taint of racism.

. . . . I also remind the House of the 1951 United Nations convention on refugees. Article 24 states:

"The Contracting States shall accord to refugees lawfully staying in the territory the same treatment as is accorded to nationals in respect of the following matters . . . social security."

. . . . I do not therefore believe that the proposals in the Bill for maintenance and support are in accordance with the spirit and possibly even the letter of our obligations under international law.

. . . . I am not happy with the voucher system that is currently in place. The Children's Society has found, from its east London project, that families and children who depend on vouchers to get food are often subject to racial harassment and discrimination in local shops. I understand the reasoning behind the voucher scheme, but it can be degrading and demeaning.

. . . . I turn now to the proposals for dispersal. Given what happened to the Vietnamese and the east African Asians, I thought that it had been demonstrated that dispersal does not work.

. . . . It has become common, in the media and among Ministers, to talk about economic migrants as if they were subhuman, yet - regardless of whether they are Irish navvies, east African Asian shop owners, the West Indians who came to work on buses and in hospitals or the west Africans who do the cleaning jobs - it is economic migrants who have built London.

. . . . I am the daughter of economic migrants, and I take exception to the tone sometimes used to describe such people. It is as if there is something wrong with travelling thousands of miles from starvation and poverty to try to better the lot of one's family. Economic migrants may not be easy to accommodate under the letter of refugee law, but it is wrong to ignore the fact that they are honestly trying to do the best that they can for their families.